Terror and ill health: the bear truth about childhood adversity

Dr Nadine Harris delivered this stunning TED MED talk in 2014. She gives the bear in the woods an important walk-on part. A paediatrician herself, she tells how a child’s ‘dose’ of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) creates clearly higher rates of health problems. And that’s not just mental health troubles, but physical ones too … all the way to suicide.

The bear truth

Dr Harris talks of how the body switches on the fear-fight-flight systems if you happen to meet a bear in the woods. Then she adds: “What happens when the bear comes home every night,and this system is activated over and over and over again?”

The constant experience of ‘fright without solution’ amounts to the pattern of disorganised Attachment and terror described by Alexandra Stein. We reviewed her book here because it shows how ‘all harmful coercion works’.

If you map ACEs and Attachment terror together, we build a strong case that links what children experience…